Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
5 facts about the Apollo 11 moon landing
5 facts about the Apollo 11 moon landing
Feb 11, 2026 6:02 AM

This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, when astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins became the first people in history to land on the Moon. Here are five facts you should know about the most famous manned space mission.

1. The Apollo 11 mission was carried out by three mander Neil Armstrong, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, mand module pilot Mike Collins. But the team that took them to the moon included more than 400,000 scientists, engineers and technicians, and workers from across the United States. Many of the people on the project were also relatively young. The average age of the engineers inside Mission Control when the Apollo 11 capsule returned on July 24, 1969 was 28.

2. puters on the Apollo spacecraft were plex than a basic calculator. According to Computer Weekly, astronauts entered mands using verb-and-noun instructions: a verb to tell puter to do a specific action, and a corresponding noun on which to do it [i.e. “aim telescope”]. To do that, it only needed 64 kilobytes of memory and operated at 0.043MHz. Today, a USB memory stick today is more powerful than the Apollo Guidance Computer.

3. Armstrong wasn’t convinced the team would be able to land their lunar module, and put the odd of success at only 50-50. “There are so many unknowns on that descent from lunar orbit down to the surface that had not been demonstrated yet by testing and there was a big chance that there was something in there we didn’t understand properly and we had to abort e back to Earth without landing,” said Armstrong. His concerns were not unwarranted since mishaps were likely. While Armstrong and Aldrin were concluding the first moonwalk, the Soviets Luna 15 probe crashed into the Moon about 530 miles from the Apollo 11 landing site.

4. Armstrong’s famous words uttered when stepping on the Moon were misheard. Most people on Earth heard, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” But Armstrong was adamant that what he had actually said was, “That’s one small step foraman, one giant leap for mankind.” “It’s just that people just didn’t hear [the ‘a’],” Armstrongtoldthe press once he was back on Earth. In 2006, puter programmer used a piece of software toanalyzeArmstrong’s words and found that the “a” was indeed there but was likely not heard because of radio static.

5. Aldrin became the first person to celebrate the Lord’s Supper on the Moon. munion bread was carried in a plastic packet, the way regular inflight food is wrapped. He also carried the wine in a vial and poured it into a small silver chalice. Before munion, Aldrin read fromJohn 15:5, which he had handwritten on a scrap of paper—”I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit, for you can do nothing without me.” munion ceremony was dramatized in an episode of From the Earth to the Moon, a twelve-part HBO television miniseries from 1998. Buzz Aldrin was played by actor Bryan Cranston.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Alexis de Tocqueville Vs. Bernie Sanders
Self-described democratic socialist, Sen. Bernie Sanders is doing relatively well in the race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. He recently polled at 34 percent (an increase from 30 percent in November) and, anecdotally, I passed several “Bernie” bumper-stickered cars on fairly empty roads this morning. Despite Sander’s and democratic socialism’s fashionableness these days, a Frenchman born in 1805 already warned against and explained the dangers of this kind of socialism. Writing for The Federalist, Acton’s Director of Research Samuel...
Explaining Interest Rates to Bernie Sanders
The day after Christmas, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders asked on Twitter: “You have families out there paying 6, 8, 10 percent on student debt but you can refinance your homes at 3 percent. What sense is that?” My snarky tweet in response was, “Because you can foreclose on a house but you can’t repossess an MFA in creative writing.” A more thorough (and thoughtful) explanation is provided by Megan McArdle. She explains why loans secured (such a by a house)...
How Can We End Hunger in America?
What does it mean to be hungry in America? And how do we solve the issue of domestic hunger? To answer those questions, Congress created the bipartisan National Commissionon Hunger, a group tasked with providing “policy mendations to Congress and the USDA Secretary to more effectively use existing programs and funds of the Department of Agriculture bat domestic hunger and food insecurity.” mission recently released a report on their findings and mendations. According to the executive summary, “ This report...
Letter from Rome: The end of fusionism?
Frank S. Meyer The American political writer Frank S. Meyer is known as the father of “fusionism,” which is usually defined as the synthesis between traditionalist and libertarian thought in modern conservatism. In practical political terms, it brought together social conservatives, free-market advocates, and proponents of a strong national defense to fight against Communism abroad and the welfare state at home and formed the basis of Ronald Reagan’s governing coalition, as well as of think tanks like the Heritage Foundation,...
Top 10 PowerBlog Posts for 2015
As we close out the year, we want to thank our PowerBlog readers for reading and contributing to our blog. If you’re a new reader we encourage you to catch up by checking out our top 10 most popular posts for 2015: 1. A Guide to Laudato Si: A Section-By-Section Summary of Pope Francis’ Encyclical on the Environment Joe Carter Pope Francis has released his eagerly anticipated encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’. While the document deserves a close reading,...
7 Figures: Millennials’ Views of American Institutions
A new Pew Research Center analysis of survey data shows that younger generations tend to have more-positive views than their elders on a number of institutions that play a significant role in American society. Here are 7 figures you should know from the report: 1. Millennials’ rating of churches and other religious organizations dropped 18 percentage points from 2010 to 2015. In 2010, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) said churches have a positive impact on the country; today, only 55 percent...
Hot Fries and the End of Work
“There can never be a world without work,” says James Bruce in this week’s Acton Commentary. “We are made to work. We flourish when we do, and we suffer when we don’t.” Now, if we think about work’s purpose or goal, we will realize that work can never end. Philosophically, rational agents have specific conditions for genuine flourishing, one of which is work. The sociological data certainly support the claims that we are made for work, and that we suffer...
Video: Lawrence Reed Challenges Progressive Mythology
The final Acton Lecture Series event of 2015 took place on December 10th as the Acton Institute joined with our friends at the Mackinac Centerto e Lawrence Reed, the president of the Foundation for Economic Education. Reed is always a favorite ALS speaker, and once again he did not disappoint; his address was entitled “Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism”, and was based on his recently released book of the same title. Reed’s lecture is available to view...
Why Minimum Wages Increases Don’t Target Poverty
If you ask most people why they support raising the minimum wage they’ll says it’s because it helps the poor. But as David Neumark, a scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco notes, numerous studies have shown that there is no statistically significant relationship between raising the minimum wage and reducing poverty. That finding may appear to be counterintuitive. After all, if poor people have low wages then increasing their wages should help reduce their poverty. To some...
How Tocqueville Schooled Bernie Sanders 200 Years Ago
Bernie Sanders appears to think all we need to be happy is more money,” says Samuel Gregg, Acton’s director of research, but Alexis de Tocqueville dismantled that idea two centuries ago. Tocqueville’s first reproach was that socialism—whatever its expression—has an inherently materialistic understanding of humans. “The first characteristic of all socialist ideologies is,” Tocqueville insisted, “an incessant, vigorous and extreme appeal to the material passions of man.” Tocqueville may have wrestled with religious questions for much of his life. Nevertheless,...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved